4.2. Moving from didactic teaching (direct instruction) to dialogical teaching and learning

the exact timing. We can even see our own lecturers when he logged in, when or whether or not he read our posts and so on. So a lot of it is self-driven, self-assessment.

John also appreciated the analytics associated with Knowledge Forum, but suggested to introduce these analytics earlier in the course so that the students can use them earlier.

The central goal of dialogic teaching, empowering learners’ voices and developing shared classroom control, seems to have worked well with some. There were learners who were ready for such challenge and felt that such a learning environment was beneficial to them. The challenge of moving from didactic approach of instruction to dialogic learning, is explicated in the next section.

4.2. Moving from didactic teaching (direct instruction) to dialogical teaching and learning

The feedback from Diane during the interview captured some of “surprises” that students experienced in this course, particularly about how the course was organised and how the students were assessed:

I think the whole, the way the course was structured, came as a surprise. Yah, because it’s very different from how the other courses have been structured, so, like, the weekly contribution, adding up to, you know the, the… building up towards the folder that we are doing, and then the, how, you know, the weekly contribution actually adds up to the, to the entire course, and eventually affecting the grade that you get, was also quite, was also a surprise to me as well…I never thought of a course being, you know, that I’ll be assessed based on what… what is being created as a community, when the thing that we’re trying to create, is not even known… it’s very much different from the other course, courses that are more, that, when they, you know it’s more predictable, and you know that, oh, like the typical courses that I’ve attended, it’s you know you, there are readings, and then after that there’s presentations, and then you share your reflections on reading, so those are more… those are things that we’re very much familiar with, whereas the structure in this course, as well as the assessment components, they are, they are entirely, they are very different.

To elaborate on the dialogic design of this course, in the first session (a face-to-face session), a 10page course outline was provided to the students during the first session, outlining the learning objectives, the approach, the schedule of topics, the criteria and rubrics for assessment, and a list of references. The learners were assigned to four groups and stayed with the same group throughout the course. The group assignment took place in the Knowledge Forum and was based on heterogeneous criteria, trying to mix learners from doctoral and Master’s level, and different work experience. The educator led the discussion of the first two sessions. Starting from the third session, the group took turns to facilitate the online discussion. Each face-to-face lesson follows the same structure: (a) student-led discussion; (b) clarification by the educator; (c) educator-led discussion and elaboration; (d) short break; and (e) class activities, often aiming at “rise above”. For the online discussion, the educator assigned one paper and encouraged the group to identify other relevant papers for discussion. Learners could choose one of the papers from the reference lists given in the course outline. The educator-led discussion often starts with a summary of the student-led online discussion in the Knowledge Forum, a highlight of some of the notes that caught his attention, and a map of keywords of the discussion (extracted using a text-mining software SOBEK). This transition from the predominant approach of direct instruction to a dialogic approach put many learners out of their comfort zone. Dylan shared, “because… my education, you know, is predominated by, you know, very, more traditional (instructive) teaching style.” Even though there are design principles underpinning the lessons, the students found it “lack of structure”, especially during the first few sessions, as epitomized by the comments from Kathy:

At the beginning I wasn’t very sure when the course first started. And it was very different because usually the course that we attend we are, we have all the material online or Blackboard, you need to download the readings every week, you know what’s going on. So at the beginning we were, I was quite surprised because there isn’t a structure.

It is noteworthy that despite a course schedule being given with the topic of discussion for each week, by not providing and prescribing all the materials for reading, the students were rather uncomfortable. Fortunately, Kathy was able to adapt to the more learner-driven approach,

And then after that I think by week three, we kind of like get the hang of it. We know how the course will proceed and we understand that you as the student will need to do most of the work.

The discomfort was partly due to the multiple voices from the students, which was a little disconcerting for some, perhaps because they were waiting for an authoritative voice to provide a definitive answer to some of the questions they were pursuing. Referring to the discussion on comparing cooperative learning with collaborative learning, Quentin said:

For example… there was quite a lot of focus on collaborative versus cooperative learning... after a few sessions it was clearer but when we were doing it at that point in time, I guess the answers because they came from the class and it was expressed in different levels of explanation and accuracy and therefore… sometimes you might therefore introduce additional content you would not be expecting and sometimes the content may not be the most precise or the most concise or the best to be hearing about.

Likewise, Urijah felt loss because of the various strands of talk in the forum, sometimes the discourse was about topics that was not in the “right direction” or not related to the original trigger question. Urijah was rather uncomfortable with the amount of irrelevant information being posted: “Everybody seems okay, contributing to more and more information but I'm always asking the bigger thing that what is this all about.”

There were learners who felt that the discussions should be anchored by the educator to provide some closure. Nolan opined,

But somehow I thought at some point and at the end of each lesson, ... there must be some form of anchoring by the facilitator or the lecturer… There must be some, some form of closure, no matter what, whether we are satisfied with the answer or not, but there must be some form of closure at the end of each lesson… it's more to reduce the uncertainty... to see whether our thinking process and our line of discussion is uh, is something that is uh... is in line with the lecturer?

The educator was trying not to prescribe the definitive answers too early for a few reasons: (1) to provide learners more opportunities to voice their views, (2) to encourage learners to reach consensus among themselves, and (3) to avoid learners building the expectation to hear from the “authoritative voice” and disregard their peers’ views.

Some students were uncomfortable with the dialogic mode of instruction because it was different from the very structured lessons that they were accustomed to, and they did not know how to do well in this course. Quentin shared about how the classmates felt when the educators did not provide all the answers but asked more questions:

Sometimes it’s just easier to rely on the professor to just tell you everything. But this one I guess we have to read up beforehand to benefit more. And I got take notes of questions my

professors are asking also, what are they actually prompting us to think about. Because there’s not much lecturing per se... it’s always questions asked and we solicit answers after discussions either at a group level or as a class level and then educator will quickly do a post mortem type of review and then ask more questions and then everybody answers… So that was, I think that unnerves certain people because we are, I think we are quite reliant on expecting the professor to know everything and all the answers. In this experience I didn’t find their answers that forthcoming but at the same time there were enough clues and hints that more or less directed us to what we might know or might not know.

This asynchronous mode of discussion also required new way of interacting with peers. It may cause some degree of ambiguity when real-time instantaneous clarification and non-verbal cues were not available. John, for example, recollected that “when people, other people do not respond that much to your post, then you kind of question whether you, whether you raised a point that is valid and whether you have an idea that allows others to elaborate on.”

Learning how to use Knowledge Forum is, however, a necessary process before it can be used productively. With the availability of many mobile applications and social media, John felt that the “interface (of Knowledge Forum) was quite old” and could cause some frustration. Sandra recalled that it took the students several weeks to get used to learning via the online forum. To Thomas, however, it is still preferable to engage in face-to-face discussion.

To some students, the challenge came from the much higher cognitive demands. Sandra shared: “…suddenly you have to take a call, you really need to decide and then make sense, make sense of the article and maybe, you know synthesize and articulate properly.” This meaning making process was daunting to some for various reasons. Sandra felt the responsibility to post notes that make sense to others, and that can promote further discussion because “whatever I'm putting on there (online forum), it has to be making sense to them (peers). And subsequently result in more discussions, right?” Sandra felt the pressure that some classmates were able to articulate their ideas eloquently, and some classmates were doctoral students. It didn’t help that Sandra did not experience Singapore mainstream education system, and was working in an international school. For this reason, she was not able to contribute as much when the discussions focused on the local education system.

To some learners, the cognitive challenge occurred because of their background knowledge and expertise in other fields rather than education. Thus, having to study this course “is really more like the paradigm (change), rather than concepts being taught,” opined Dylan, who came from another college in the university. To Nolan, the course was challenging because the last time he attended a formal course was about 30 years ago.

Another cognitive challenge was the concept mapping task. It was introduced to allow individual to make sense of the key ideas being discussed and to relate various concepts. Some learners, however, were not familiar with this mode of representing information. Urijah, for instance, shared that “I don't think I'm doing it the right way.”

A further source of challenge is the group processes, particularly during the initial phase of the course. When the students were not very familiar with one another, they found it hard to interpret the motives behind certain discourse. Diane explained: “because we were all still not familiar with one another, so… (what) some people say… may not go very well initially and… then you would tend to, you know, jump to certain conclusions.”

Another tension in the group process was felt when a classmate was dominating a discussion on a topic that was not of interest to the rest. Quentin recalled:

I guess it does irritate the course mates a little bit more when someone dominates as well. It’s a conversation that goes on and on, someone pursues a topic that no one cares about. All too polite to shut it down, it does waste time in that sense.

While the intended learning design was to foster collaboration among the learners, there was still a sense of competition. In one of the sessions in the latter part of the course, the educator illustrated the analytic tools in the Knowledge Forum by showing the online participation behaviours such as the contribution rate from the students. John felt the pressure to have people respond to one’s posts “(b)ecause eventually…they did identify people who are the highest contributors and normally these contributors, their post are better responded to by other people.” Likewise, Sandra was envy of the classmates, “the way they used to articulate their thoughts… I used to wonder how they're doing it.”

Fortunately, there were learners like Dylan, who could overcome the initial discomfort with the dialogic mode of instruction, and eventually benefited from the dialogic mode of instruction. Dylan reflected, “I was quite intrigued by the fact that despite the lack of very… more rigid teaching structure, may I put it? Yah, the objectives, the learning objectives, all that, seems to be met.” Quentin was another learner who appreciated the learning design and how the educators encouraged collaborative inquiry through questioning:

I think there was a... there was a hidden structure. It was always there, just wasn’t that explicit. I didn’t think it was that bad, because on one hand it allowed us as a class to pursue certain things I think where, ‘cause the class is made up of quite a number of people with all different interests. And it allowed the class to therefore dictate certain interests which is otherwise lost in a rigid curriculum; and two, I think through the conversations we had in class, I think we had a deeper understanding of certain topics as well. While we may not cover breadth but I think in terms of personalizing the lessons to what people might be interested in, I think there’s an improvement to that area…on hindsight and reflect on it, I think the questions helped. Because the questions were never meant to just end the class so we were always left with questions at the end of class as well. I think those helped because at least in moments when I sometimes think about what exactly happened in that class, why was that question asked… there were prompts and triggers in that direction so I appreciated that.

Urijah, another learner who appreciated the questioning by the educators, commented, “what’s the difference between analogy and metaphor?” Urijah felt that the educator’s questions “get us to think deeper and then the answers he provided are succinct so it makes it clearer. So there's not a lot of talking on his part, which is quite good actually because then we are not too overwhelmed and too bored.” Intriguingly, Urijah, who was not familiar with concept mapping, shared that this learning activity has values in helping one to see how various pieces of information fit together in the whole picture:

so when I start to read I have to think how does this information fit into the whole picture, and so that instead of just merely copying sentences after sentences - accumulating notes - I have to then think what is the theme that I'm going to put - how do they link to the other information… So all these helps me to formulate the ideas better and clearer in my head, so it gives me an overall better picture of the whole...what the whole article is or paper is about.

Urijah also shared that learners need to put in effort to adapt to the new mode of learning. Urijah recalled the “lousy feeling” during a discussion due to the lack of preparation. “I felt really lousy and I thought I was there for … two to three hours - and what am I doing here tonight? (laughs) I'm not enjoying and I'm not understanding what is happening...I do not understand what is happening and I'm like lost.” This served as a “wakeup call” for Urijah to read and prepare for the lessons.